Alex got to the office at six o'clock the next morning. He hadn't slept well, but at least he'd come up with a course of action. The first step was to check in with the Patent and Trademark Office. The group director of Technology Center 2130-the PTO examination group responsible for computer cryptography and security-was a Stanford grad named Hank Shiffman, whom Alex had been friendly with when they were students. Having a friend like Hank inside was huge-he was smart enough to really get what Obsidian was about, and he knew all the bizarre inner workings of the patent office, too. Hank and 2130 hadn't officially received the application yet, but Hank had been keeping Alex unofficially apprised of its progress since it had first arrived at the Office of Initial Patent Examination. The last Alex had heard, the application had been forwarded to the Department of Defense for national security review. A security review was routine for an invention dealing with cryptography, and unless the DoD decided to issue a secrecy order-a huge pain in the neck but, thank God, highly unlikely-the application would soon pass muster and be assigned to a formal examiner in Hank's group.

It was nine o'clock in Virginia, where the PTO was located. Alex called Hank and got his voice mail.

Damn. Hank was always at his desk early. Well, maybe he was in the bathroom or something.

The message said to press zero to speak to an operator. Alex did. A moment later, a woman asked, “How may I direct your call?”

“I'm trying to reach Hank Shiffman.”

There was a pause. The woman said, “Ah, could you hold on for just a moment?”

Alex waited, wondering why the woman had sounded so uncertain about something so mundane.

A moment later, another woman's voice came on, throatier than the first, the tone more businesslike. “Hello, this is Director Jane Hamsher, Computer Architecture, Software, and Information Security. May I ask to whom I'm speaking?”

Alex thought for a moment. The information Hank had been feeding him was back-channel. He didn't want to create a problem for his friend.

“This is Alex Treven,” he said. “I'm a friend of Hank's from Stanford.”

There was a pause, then the woman said, “I see. Then I'm sorry to be the one to tell you that Hank passed away yesterday.”

Alex had one long moment during which he was certain he had heard wrong. He replayed the woman's words in his head, trying to arrive at a construction that made sense. Nothing did.

Finally he managed to blurt out, “What… what happened? How?”

“Apparently, it was a heart attack.”

Alex thought of Hank, a vegetarian and a demon on the squash court. “But… Hank was totally healthy. I mean, I don't think I've ever known anyone that healthy.”

“I know, it's been quite a shock to all of us. It seems it was something congenital, but they're still trying to work it out. We ‘re all going to miss Hank. He was a good man and very capable.”

She was easing away. Alex thought, Well, nothing to protect him from if he's dead, and said, “The thing is, Hank was… advising me on a cryptography application on behalf of a client. I wonder if there's someone else there who could give me an update?”

There was a pause. “Hank was the examiner?” the woman asked, her tone doubtful.

“No, it hadn't been assigned to a group yet. As far as I know, it's still at OIPE, and subject to Defense Department review-”

“Well, as soon as it's cleared the review, OIPE will assign it to a technology group, probably 2130 from your description. We'll be in touch at that point.”

Damn, not quite the sympathetic reaction he'd been hoping a bereaved friend would rate. “Right,” Alex said. “Thank you.”

“Not at all. And again, my condolences.”

He hung up. Time for a Plan B. Trouble was, with Hilzoy dead, he was already at Plan B. And it didn't seem to be going well.

First Hilzoy, then Hank. Unbelievable. It was like Obsidian was cursed.

He thought about what to do next. He still needed to find out who stood to inherit the rights to the patent if-when-it was issued. Also to roll up his sleeves and thoroughly assess the technology-the benefits, the limitations, all possible applications in various potential markets. Up until now, Hilzoy had been the best pitchman for Obsidian as something you could build a company around. With Hilzoy gone, Alex would need to be able to talk that talk.

He went through Hilzoy's file and was unsurprised to find no information on family. All right, he'd put Alisa on this. Contact the ex-wife and figure out who were the closest relatives-the likely beneficiaries under a will, or the most likely to inherit if Hilzoy died intestate.

Finally, the technology itself. Hilzoy always left a backup DVD of the latest version with Alisa when he visited the office. Alex went out and retrieved it, then popped it into the bay of his laptop. When the program booted, Alex was surprised to hear music coming from the laptop's tiny speakers. He didn't recognize the tune-something instrumental. He listened for a minute, then found a command to turn it off. It was creepy, imagining Hilzoy listening to it while he worked on Obsidian. Maybe it was one of his favorites.

He started performing the various applications, describing them as he worked, pretending he was talking to a VC. “Did you see how fast Obsidian encrypted a five-gigabyte video file? Well, it scales, too. We've tested it up to five terabytes, and we think it can go further. And not just video, of course not. Any data. Any platform. And the decrypt process is just as quick. Watch this…”

He kept at it for an hour, immersed, lost to the outside world. He had to be able to do this. He had to.

There was a knock on his door. He called out, “Yeah.”

The door opened and Sarah walked in. “Hey,” she said, her tone and accompanying expression suggesting she was not entirely pleased.

“What is it?” Alex asked, startled to see her, his mind still more than half occupied by Obsidian.

She sat down and looked at him. “Has it not occurred to you that other people might be concerned about what happened to Hilzoy?”

Alex frowned. Why couldn't she just act like a first-year associate was supposed to? She couldn't just barge in here, plop down in a seat like his office was her second home, and start interrogating him.

“Look-” he started to say.

She leaned forward, her elbows on his desk. “You blew out of here and went to the police station yesterday. What was that all about?”

Alex forced himself not to glance down at the alluring bit of décolletage he sensed in his peripheral vision. All right, maybe she had a point. “He was murdered,” he said.

Suddenly her expression was soft again. “Oh my God, I can't believe it.”

He thought he should just tell her he was busy. Convey his displeasure with her failure to show him the appropriate deference. He'd always been deferential when he was a first-year. What was wrong with her?

Instead, he said, “There was a bunch of heroin in the trunk of his car. Some kind of drug deal, they think.”

“Heroin? Hilzoy? Come on, he was a geek. That doesn't make sense.”

“I guess you can never tell.”

She leaned back as though she intended to stay awhile. “The police called you because… they thought you might know something?”

For a moment Alex hesitated, and then he surrendered. Hilzoy, then Hank… it was so weird, he just needed to talk to someone. He told her about the cell phone connection that led the police to him, about the Q &A at headquarters, even about the DNA test. He hadn't been planning to say so much; in fact, he hadn't planned on saying anything. He sensed that in doing so now he was taking a chance, the risks of which he didn't fully understand and certainly couldn't control. The feeling made him feel slightly dizzy, almost nauseated.